This invention pertains to a method and apparatus for cleaning squid bodies, and particularly for cleaning such bodies which have, in any suitable fashion, been separated from the heads and tentacles.
As is known by many people involved at various levels in the food and nutrition industries, squid represents an extremely low-cost, high-nutritional-value seafood. There is, however, a barrier to the mass introduction of squid into the marketplace, resulting from the equally well-known difficulty of attaining high-speed economical cleaning. Taking, generally speaking, an overview of the required cleaning process, it involves the removal of the head, eyes, skin, viscera and backbone from the mantle, to leave a white flesh cone which can then be split into a fillet for ultimate cleaning, packaging and consumption. Removal of the head with tentacles, etc., from a squid body is a relatively easy thing to accomplish quickly and economically, but it is the other steps required to result in the final cleaned fillet that present the major roadblocks.
Accordingly, a general object of the present invention is to provide a unique method and apparatus for the cleaning of squid bodies from which, in any suitable manner, the heads and tentacles, and immediately associated anatomy, have been severed.
More particularly, an object of the invention is to provide such a method and apparatus which produces high-speed, low-cost automated cleaning.
Still another object of the invention is to provide a method and apparatus of the type generally outlined which employs relatively simple, reliable, low-maintenance apparatus which can easily be incorporated in conventional seafood processing installations, whether such installations be land-based or ship-based.
According to a preferred embodiment of the apparatus of the invention, the same employs two endless, perforate conveyor belts, power driven--one being referred to as an upstream conveyor belt, and the other being referred to as a downstream conveyor belt. Runs in these belts partially overlap and confront one another facially to define, collectively, a transport path through the apparatus for the conveying of successive squid bodies. While in all instances this need not be the case, in the apparatus shown and described herein, these "working" runs of the belts lie in closely vertically spaced horizontal planes.
The working run of the upstream belt receives successive squid bodies on its upper surface, with a vacuum drawn through its perforations to hold the bodies securely against the run. As successive bodies travel in a downstream direction on this run, they are first slit to fillet them, and are thereafter subjected to a combined mechanical and hydraulic scrubbing action furnished by a rotary brush, and by high-pressure sprays of water. As the filleted and one-side-cleaned bodies pass downstream from the scrubbing mechanism, they come into confronting relationship with the lower face of the working run in the downstream belt. At a point downstream from where the vacuumizing structure associated with the upstream conveyor belt ends, apparatus is provided to draw a vacuum through the perforations in the lower run of the downstream belt, to effect a transfer of successive squid bodies to the lower fact of the lower run. At a location downstream from the downstream end of the upstream conveyor belt, the opposite undersides of the bodies are subjected to the same kind of combined mechanical and hydraulic scrubbing action discussed in conjunction with the upstream belt. Thereafter, the cleaned bodies are discharged from the off-bearing end of the downstream conveyor belt.
Various other objects and advantages which are attained by the method and apparatus of the invention will become more fully apparent as the description which now follows is read in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.